When wires are routed close to one another in electronic devices, such as a printed circuit board (PCB) or an integrated circuit (IC), signals traveling on the wires may distort signals on neighboring wires. This distortion is termed “crosstalk.” Crosstalk is primarily due to capacitive-coupling between the wires which causes the signal on an “aggressor” wire to distort the signal on a “victim” wire. Crosstalk may substantially reduce the quality of signals such that a message received via the victim may be different (i.e., erroneous) than the original message. In terms of digital logic, an aggressor may cause enough distortion to change the logic state (0 or 1) in parts of the victim's signal. The impact of crosstalk is especially troublesome in low-voltage integrated circuits because relatively small changes in the voltage and/or timing of a signal can lead to errors. Indeed, crosstalk greatly limits the speed and increases power consumption of integrated circuits.
Low-swing (a.k.a., reduced swing) on-chip signaling schemes reduce power consumption in system-on-chip designs by using lower voltages (e.g., operating in a range between 0.0 V to 3.6 V peak instead of a full-swing range between 0.0 V to 5.0 V peak). However, due to the lower voltage, such low-swing schemes are more susceptible to crosstalk, which increases the risk of signal distortion.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.